Tag Archives: Teacher vacancies

Can you crochet your socks off? Are you a free motion embroidery expert with a passion for showing off? Do you spend hours and hours felting wool until you have reached felty perfection? If so, we would like to hear from you!

We are on the look-out for three new craft teachers to join our gang of crafters and help the lovely people of Ashford learn some new skills – we currently only have sewing workshops run by Clair, and patchworking classes, run by the ever so talented Mandy Munroe. On our list of wanted skills are crochet, free motion embroidery and needle felting, which are all subjects we have requests for from customers at the shop on a regular basis.

Crochet is something we’re always being asked about and unfortunately our old crochet teacher hasn’t been with us for some time now due to family commitments. But if you fancy hooking up (geddit?) with some of our customers who want to learn the difference between treble and triple stitches (no, me neither) then you could be the new star teacher at our shop. All we need from you is a set of supreme crochet skills, so we know you really know your stuff, and a fairly flexible timescale as to when you can teach.

Free motion embroidery is a fabulously expressive artform and one that can really make the difference between a good quilt and a great quilt. We have several fantastic Brother machines here that can free motion embroidery, so we have all the equipment, plus the eager customers, but no teacher! Can you help us out? We really hope so!

Over the years we’ve been asked about various different crafts, but needle felting hasn’t been one of them until recently, and now suddenly some of you seem very keen to get to grips with this very stabby craft. Using real wool and some very sharp needles, the fibres are blended together into a solid sheet or lump to form whatever you want to make – from the very basic spherical blobs to complicated constructions like animals, bags or hats. We are keen to explore this art form with you, so we are keen to find someone who can help us source the right equipment and materials to really make sure we make the best of having new classes, so if you are the right person to spread the joy of felting, we want to hear from you.

If you are a crafty type and fancy teaching others how to get their skills going, we would love you to get in touch. There are only a few things we need from you:

We really need you to be able to teach on Saturdays – not all the time, but even the odd one makes a difference to people who work all week and want to get crafty at the weekend.

We need you to know your onions! You don’t have to be a full on expert with a degree from the University of CRAFT, but we want our customers to feel assured that they will be learning from someone who can help them with their queries, answer relevant questions and help them progress from absolute newbie to happy beginner.

We need you to be super friendly and not scared to talk to people – we understand that everyone gets nervous when they talk in front of a group of people, but we only ever have four or five, possibly six at the most, in a class, so we want the atmosphere to be more like a group of friends getting together for a craft session than a teacher/pupil set up. So if you’ve got the skills but you’re never taught anyone how to do anything before, you might want to have a practice on a friend, just to be sure you like it!

So if you tick all these boxes and would like to join our team of teachers, please do get in touch so we can arrange an interview. Send us an email on emporia.fabric@gmail.com outlining your particular skills and your availability for teaching at the shop.